Bearings are used in a wide variety of industries and applications, including in coupling assemblies. Coupling assemblies may be configured as a brake to transmit force which restricts rotation of a member and/or as a clutch to transmit force to cause rotation of a member. Such coupling assemblies include, for example, the coupling assembly disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,997,297, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated herein in its entirety. Coupling assemblies may include one or more bearing arrangements.
Some bearing arrangements, which may include one or more roller devices, may use an array of planar stages including a number of rollers contained in a retention cage disposed between two surfaces (e.g., thrust races) that may rotate in opposite directions. The rotational axis of each roller may be skewed at a common angle relative to a radial direction of the cage. As power density requirements increase, additional rollers may be added to each stage, but space may limit a total number of rollers than can be used with a particular size of retention cage. During rotation, certain rollers, such as those at outer radial positions, may rotate a greater amount relative to other rollers, such as those disposed at inner radial positions, which may result in sliding and/or skidding. Disposing rollers at larger skewing angles may result in more skidding and/or the effects of friction may increase.
Among other things, the present disclosure addresses one or more of the aforementioned challenges.